What are these people about?

[jbor]

Scott wrote:

> Terrance:
>> And why can't Jere get on his knees and pray at the massacre museum? Is
>> it really because people are watching him? This doesn't make any sense.
>> A Quaker who fears falling to his knees? This is the same Quaker who
>> will not hesitate to use violence to right a wrong? Or not even right a
>> wrong but only make  himself feel a bit better for lashing out.
> 
> Dixon also desires that the 'Murderers meet appropriate Fates', yet believes
> himself unfit for the job. Is it his own Faithlessness that he fears will be
> judged by those 'many' who are watching? That if he kneels down, he may not
> be able to climb back up/out again?

I think that Terrance is right in that the "many" who are watching are the
local townsfolk, the same "them" who might turn into a murderous mob at the
sight of Quaker garb. But I think that something needs to be said in defence
of Dixon at the massacre site, and that just as _M&D_ is not anti-Jesuit
it's not anti-Quaker (or anti-athiest or anti-agnostic) either. In going to
the gaol "as Mason" I see an echo of the way Fra Christopher Maire disguised
himself as Emerson's Cousin Ambrose from "godless London" to go off to The
Jolly Pitman in County Durham (227). Dixon has learnt that much from his
mentor - 'when in Rome ... ' or, at least, to remain as inconspicuous as
possible. And I think that he also learnt that this inconspicuousness (and
thus, self-preservation) can be achieved in a number of ways, for example by
donning a ridiculous Ramillies wig or turning oneself into an outrageous
buffoon, as Dixon does when he and Mason are under threat at The Dutch
Rifle, just as well as by donning the nondescript clothes of the introverted
astronomer. What provokes his disguise is not fear so much as common sense,
keeping his instinctive impulsiveness in check - something which he has only
lately learnt from his teacher.

I think that one difference between the situation here and later on, one
reason that Dixon does not prostrate himself and reveal his empathy with the
massacred Indians and thereby disclose his antagonism towards the townsfolk
who let it happen and who seem to have forgotten the event so quickly, is
that he can do nothing now to save those people, whereas in that moment with
the slave-owner later he can do something, and that there and then his
"faith" - in himself first and foremost - is restored.

But I also think that the contempt which the characters feel at this point
is not so much for the Paxtons themselves as for these townsfolk who, it
seems to Mason, have drunk of "Lethe-water" (346.23), who have forgotten so
quickly that terrible massacre of some few months ago, who believe that some
(karmic) "Debt is paid" (344.1) by such brutal and unprovoked slaughter, who
quickly carry on with their petty personal and political squabbling as if
nothing at all had happened: "In America, Time is the true River that runs
'round Hell." And, at chapter's end, it is indeed as if the lads are
climbing the rungs of a ladder out of Hell as they leave Lancaster Town.
(348) Cha and Jere's contempt for those who carried out the slaughter is not
as great (cf. 311.14 ff) as it is for those who watched it happen and who
then set about to justify it afterwards:

    In Time, these People are able to forget ev'rything. Be willing but to
    wait a little, and ye may gull them again and again, however ye wish,--
    even unto their own Dissolution. (346.24)

I think this is one of those moments when the sympathies of the characters
and text are in close alignment.

best